


the seer, unbound

by starsshinedarkly77



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Mentions of Violence, Meta, Mothman, Origin Story, Pre-Canon, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Violence, Purple Prose, Visions, Wordy, character exploration, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 19:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17924696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsshinedarkly77/pseuds/starsshinedarkly77
Summary: In an attempt to see what must be done to save Sylvain, Indrid sees too much.Or, an explanation of how Indrid got his powers.





	the seer, unbound

**Author's Note:**

> Well this idea has been dancing around in my head for about a week now and I finally managed to get it down on paper. I really enjoyed writing this and am proud of how it turned out, so I hope you enjoy it!

Night comes slowly to Sylvain in the summertime.

As the shadows grow long and creeping, the heat of the day giving way to the cool of early evening, the kingdom quiets and stills. Parents call their children in from long days of play and tuck them into bed, then gather with each other to settle in for quiet conversation. Shops close; bars open. Lamps light. Insects begin an aria in the tall grass, out of sight from all but the keenest eyes, though their songs can be heard for miles. The Heart of Sylvain glows bright and proud in the castle courtyard.

Far above the ground and the quaint scenes of the city, in one of the palace’s tall, winding towers, Indrid Cold sits, eyes closed, a paintbrush held aloft in his hand, hovering centimeters away from a blank, white canvas. Though a bystander from the city below would never know it, Indrid has been at his task for hours, since before night fell, and as such the room around him has grown dark and cold, the lamps unlit. Indrid has never done well with the cold; even the mild chill of a summer night is unpleasant to him, and he shivers slightly underneath the soft black down that covers his body.

Still, intent upon his task, he sits. Waits.

The paintbrush quivers in his hand. Creeps closer to the canvas, and…

Indrid sneezes loudly, sending a thick black line of paint shooting up the center of the canvas.

He sighs, and opens his eyes.

The room has indeed grown exceptionally dark, dark enough that the average Sylvan would have a hard time seeing more than a few feet in front of them, but Indrid’s keen eyes, casting a faint red glow, have no trouble perceiving the room - his room - just as well as they would during the day.

Compared to the rest of the palace, the room is austere, thought it is far from what could be considered tidy. Its main features are a collection of canvases in varying sizes, some blank and some decidedly not, either set up on easels or leaning against the curved stone walls. Where there are not canvases there are pieces of parchment covered in writings and drawings, or teetering stacks of books. Directly across from the door is a large window, and below the window a bed of sorts, more akin to a nest. By Indrid’s standards the room is orderly, but he knows it drives Janelle absolutely mad to even set foot in it.

Setting the paintbrush down, Indrid stands, stretching his wings as he does so, taking care not to let them flap too wildly - he’s done such a thing far too many times before and sent too many important notes flying out the open window, or else made contact with a still-wet painting and ruined it entirely.

He lights a lamp directly overhead, more for warmth’s sake than for the light it provides, and turns back to consider the canvas in front of him. The black line that bisects it is crude, ugly, and ultimately meaningless, which is the greatest of its crimes by far. Sighing again, Indrid lifts the canvas from the easel and sets it against the wall.

He tries not to feel too frustrated, too discouraged; Janelle says beating himself up is unproductive.

He snorts out loud to himself. _Unproductive._ Yes, that about sums it up.

He must certainly seem that way to those outside the castle, and even to some of those inside it. Indrid knows his talents - his visions - can be hard to take seriously. The gift of premonition - the occurrence of a seer, an oracle - is rare even among the rich, magical history of Sylvain, and for the majority of his life, Indrid, too, believed that the things he saw were, as his parents seemed to think, merely strange dreams or the byproducts of an overactive imagination. As he grew from child to young adult, however, his visions increased in frequency and intensity, and his parents grew concerned about the apparently vivid hallucinations he began to experience, sometimes only once every few weeks, and sometimes several times in a single day. Worried for his health, they took him to a healer, and the healer, unable to come up with any sort of diagnosis, went to the castle and brought back the Minister of Magic herself, who explained to Indrid and his parents that the visions, rather than the symptom of trauma or illness they feared, were a gift from Sylvain itself.

Working with Janelle over the course of several decades had refined Indrid’s visions, brought them into greater scope and detail, enough so that he was able to record them visually so that they could be brought before the Interpreter for - well, interpretation. Some had come true, and some had not, and slowly Indrid had grown aware of the difference between an unlikely future and a likely one. Still, unlike the magic performed by other Sylvans, Indrid found himself unable to conjure visions at will, to see particular events or accrue specific pieces of information. For a long time, it hadn’t particularly bothered him, or Janelle, who maintained that his visions occurred as Sylvain willed them, and that the will of Sylvain couldn’t possibly be wrong.

Now, however.

Now, things have changed, and Indrid has grown tired of waiting.

It’s been weeks since he was able to produce a vision of any clarity whatsoever. In his dreams he sees not the future but the present, which looms as dark and terrifying as any future he’s ever foreseen, likely or not. In his dreams there is the crystal, the Heart of Sylvain, with a crack running through its center, growing larger and deeper by the day, its light fading by minute degrees, and the citizens of Sylvain growing fearful and suspicious as they whisper amongst each other, while those inside the castle work day and night trying to uncover an answer, a solution, a direction of any kind. Janelle pours over her books, the Interpreter pours over Indrid’s paintings, and Indrid pours over empty canvas for days a time and produces only ugly black lines, black lines that bear too great a resemblance to the crack in the Heart of Sylvain.

They’re losing faith in him, he knows; Janelle visits less and less (it’s almost a relief, not having to watch her try to keep the look of disappointment off her face), and the Interpreter visits more and more, growing impatient and demanding. Indrid gives him everything he can, which isn’t much, and tries not to think about what the rest of the kingdom must think of him, holed up in his tiny tower doing nothing while the Heart of Sylvain cracks apart. Several days ago the crack widened with a horrible rumble and pieces tumbled from the crack and scattered on the ground around it. Several civilians screamed when they saw it, and the next day Vincent set up a battery of guards around the crystal. He’s talking about establishing a schedule, rationing the amount of energy the citizens are allowed to take from it until they figure out what’s going on. Indrid tries not to think about that either.

Instead, in the present, Indrid walks to the window and stares down into the courtyard. The Heart of Sylvain glows warmly, and the sight of it warms him despite the accompanying pang of fear and foreboding that shoots through his being. The crack isn’t visible from his tower, and for a moment he languishes in the luxury of pretending everything is the same as it has always been, that everything is fine.

But everything is not fine. And Indrid needs to do something about it.

He turns from the window sharply and begins to descend from his tower.

Janelle explained magic to him in this way: that it came from the Heart of Sylvain, when one truly believed in it, and knew how to ask for it. She and Indrid had both agreed it was a skill Indrid didn’t need to hone, as his visions always came unprompted, gifts from the Heart of Sylvain itself. It felt ungrateful to beg for more in the face of such a blessing.

Now, however…

Indrid sweeps through the halls of the castle as quickly as he dares, trying not to attract undue attention. It’s easier said than done when one is an eight foot tall being with black fur, beaming red eyes and a inconveniently large wingspan (he stands out even among the most exotic of Sylvans), but those in the castle are used to him for the most part and only nod politely as he passes.

At one point he encounters Vincent, deep in quiet but seemingly heated conversation with one of the castle’s head guards. Vincent notices him and glances up, holds up a hand in greeting, but Indrid averts his eyes, tries to pretend he hasn’t seen him, and walks hastily past. He can’t afford to stop, not now.

Finally he reaches his destination, and glances about to be sure he’s completely alone before slipping through the door that leads down underneath the castle. He descends - down and down and down until he regrets walking and wishes he’d simply flown down, but he’s only just spread his wings when he steps off the final rickety stair onto rich, brown earth.

He digs his feet in instinctively, shutting his eyes and breathing in the rich, cool air of the cavern. He feels a buzz of energy in his palms, his legs, the very center of his being, and, eyes still closed, he walks forward into the center of the cavern. Some inexplicable sensation in his gut tells him when to stop, and Indrid opens his eyes.

Descending from the ceiling and cascading through the floor of the cavern is the Heart of Sylvain in all its glory, huge and strange and powerful, the crack hidden from view above the crust of the planet. It glows brightly enough here to make his eyes water, and Indrid drops to one knee almost instinctively, as if it’s somehow disrespectful to remain standing in front of it.

It feels so right to be here, in its presence, and he feels more at peace than he has in weeks.

What he’s about to do is the right thing. It must be. The Heart of Sylvain will give him what he asks for, and he will present it to the Interpreter, and the Council will convene and fix everything. Everything is going to be okay.

It has to be.

Indrid settles onto both knees and bows his head. He’s not sure if he should speak out loud or not, so he settles for thinking as hard as he can, his eyes slipping shut and his brow furrowing with the force of his concentration.

_Oh, Heart of Sylvain,_ he thinks. _I thank you for the gifts you have already given me. I don’t wish to seem ungrateful for them. I know everything I’ve seen is just as you have willed it. But please, show me more. Your people are so afraid and uncertain. Please, show me what’s to come. Show me what can be done to heal the crystal, to put everyone’s fears to rest._

And then he waits.

He waits until his knees begin to ache from kneeling on the ground and he’s started to shiver with cold once more, and still he sees nothing behind his eyelids but black.

Well, that’s fine then. He’s never had to ask for a vision before. Perhaps he’s simply not doing it right.

_Sylvain, please hear me. I am your servant, Indrid Cold, the seer. You chose me as your oracle and you have my eternal gratitude for the gift you’ve given me. I call upon you to show me your will, to tell me how to heal you, how to heal your people. Please, show me. Show me your will._

And he waits again.

Nothing stretches into more nothing, and more nothing still, and finally Indrid opens his eyes, trying to bite down the frustration that wells up in his chest and stings his eyes with unshed tears.

_“Please,”_ he says, speaking directly to the crystal above him. _“Please._ I need to see more. I _have_ to see more. People are counting on me.”

The Heart of Sylvain remains silent.

An anger and desperation that he’s never felt before rises in Indrid as he leaps to his feet, his wings flapping wildly behind him, his fists clenching.

_“Show me!”_ Indrid shouts upwards, his voice cracking over the words. “I need to _see._ I need you to _show me._ Show me **_everything!_** _”_

And the Heart of Sylvain, unfortunately, obliges him.

It’s as if a chasm has opened inside his mind, right down the center of his forehead, so deep and gaping and intensely painful that he’s not sure if he _has_ a skull anymore, or even a body. A chasm opens and _keeps_ opening ever inward and ever wider, and as it opens and opens and opens, Indrid _sees._

He has never seen like this before. Gone are the single snapshots he usually experiences, the simplicity and limitation of a finite scene, fuzzy and grey at the edges, something easily recreated on parchment or canvas. No, Indrid sees a hundred things at once, a thousand things, overlapping and layering and repeating, playing out and then reversing, splintering off into a thousand more visions behind his eyelids. Voices and sounds scream over one another in his mind, sickeningly loud and indecipherable, in a myriad of languages he doesn’t recognize. He sees places he doesn’t know and places that don’t and shouldn’t exist. He sees things and knows that he was never supposed to see them. He sees things and wishes with all his heart he would _stop seeing them._ But there is no stopping this.

After all, he _asked_ for this.

He is unaware of falling to his knees in front of the crystal, of clutching his head in both hands as if it might fly apart if he lets go. He is unaware of choking as he tries and fails to draw breath into his lungs.

He is entirely unaware of the present. Indrid sees only the future.

Among the million million things that he cannot interpret or understand, the billions of fragments that whip past too fast and too vague to make any sense of, things stand out, floating to the top of an endless swirling sea in the chasm of his mind. The horrific creaking of metal and terrified screams, splashes into freezing cold water below. Figures made of white light shifting and changing and growing stained with blood.A gate of dark grey stone standing tall in a forest, far away from here in both space and time, bathed in white moonlight. A girl surrounded by fire. And countless bodies and faces of the dead, Sylvan and not Sylvan alike, so much death and destruction and despair that Indrid believes, truly and completely, that _he_ is dying with them.

Through it all he knows, somehow, that it will not all come to pass. Likely futures and unlikely futures. The probable, the possible, the avoidable, all mingling and merging together. Underneath it all, there is something, _something,_ like hope.

But he sees something else, too, crystal clear and as vivid as if it is happening in front of him in the present. The Heart of Sylvain, cracking further and further, crumbling under its own weight, its light fading, and the planet churning beneath his very feet, dying and dying and dying and _dying._

Indrid Cold sees Sylvain die a thousand times in a thousand ways in a thousand different futures. Indrid Cold knows how to tell a likely future from an unlikely one.

Before the Heart of Sylvain, Indrid Cold opens his eyes and screams.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at starsshinedarkly77!


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